Learning in, through, and about the arts stimulates creative action and response by engaging and connecting thinking, imagination, senses, and feelings. By participating in the arts, students’ personal well-being is enhanced.

In the arts, students learn to work both independently and collaboratively to construct meanings, produce works, and respond to and value others’ contributions. They learn to use imagination to engage with unexpected outcomes and to explore multiple solutions.

Practising an art, no matter how well, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.

Dance

Dance is expressive movement that has intent, purpose, and form.

In dance education, students integrate thinking, moving, and feeling. They explore and use dance elements, vocabularies, processes, and technologies to express personal, group, and cultural identities, to convey and interpret artistic ideas, and to strengthen social interaction.

Students develop literacy in dance as they learn about, and develop skills in, performing, choreographing, and responding to a variety of genres from a range of historical and contemporary contexts.

Drama

Drama expresses human experience through a focus on role, action, and tension, played out in time and space. In drama education, students learn to structure these elements and to use dramatic conventions, techniques, and technologies to create imagined worlds. Through purposeful play, both individual and collaborative, they discover how to link imagination, thoughts, and feelings.

As students work with drama techniques, they learn to use spoken and written language with increasing control and confidence and to communicate effectively using body language, movement, and space. As they perform, analyse, and respond to different forms of drama and theatre, they gain a deeper appreciation of their rich cultural heritage and language and new power to examine attitudes, behaviours, and values.

By means of the drama that they create and perform, students reflect and enrich the cultural life of their schools, whānau, and communities.

Music – Sound Arts

Sound from natural, acoustic, and digital environments is the source material for expressive ideas in music. Music is a fundamental form of expression, both personal and cultural. Value is placed upon the musical heritages of New Zealand’s diverse cultures, including traditional and contemporary Māori musical arts. By making, sharing, and responding to music, students contribute to the cultural life of their schools, whānau, peer groups, and communities.

In music education, students work individually and collaboratively to explore the potential of sounds and technologies for creating, interpreting, and representing music ideas. As they think about and explore innovative sound and media, students have rich opportunities to further their own creative potential.

As students learn to communicate musically with increasing sophistication, they lay a foundation for the lifelong enjoyment of and participation in music.

Visual Arts

Through engaging in the visual arts, students learn how to discern, participate in, and celebrate their own and others’ visual worlds.

An understanding of Māori visual culture is achieved through exploration of Māori contexts. The arts of European, Pasifika, Asian, and other cultures add significant dimensions to New Zealand visual culture.

In visual arts education, students explore experiences, stories, abstract concepts, social issues, and needs, both individually and collaboratively. They experiment with materials, using processes and conventions to develop their visual enquiries and create both static and time-based art works.

Students view art works, bringing their own experiences, sharing their responses, and generating multiple interpretations. Their meaning making is further informed by investigation of the contexts in which art works are created, used, and valued.